Most of the prior art belly-bands have been formed by knitting woolen yarn or mixture of woolen yarn and rubberized yarns into a ring shape. Some of the prior art belly-bands are formed by a strip of cloth being wound around the belly of a user to protect the belly from being chilled. Furthermore, belly-bands which are particularly adapted to protect a person who rides a horse or motorcycle against gastroptosis have been proposed and employed with certain success and these belly-bands have been formed of a piece of leather having a buckle which secures the opposite ends of the band together. These leather belly-bands can not be used as a general purpose belly-band.
The knitted woolen or combined woolen and rubberized yarn belly-band has an advantage in keeping the belly warm, but such a knitted belly-band can not be satisfactorily held on the belly with the required firmness. In addition, after the knitted belly-band has been repeatedly used, the woolen yarns gradually lose their elasticity. As a result, the belly-band whose woolen yarns have lost their elasticity can not be held in position and frequently and/or invariably slip off the belly. Furthermore, the knitted prior art belly-band would become worn away to the degree that the belly-band can not be used for its expected practical purpose.
Although the belly-band comprising a strip of cloth as referred to above is less expensive as compared with the knitted belly-band, it requires tedious manual work in winding the belly-band around the belly of a person and a skill in obtaining a desired thickness of the band on the belly. That is, when the cloth belly-band is too tightly applied around the belly, the user feels a sense of compression. On the other hand, when the cloth belly-band is too loosely applied around the belly, the band would easily slip off the belly and become useless as the belly-band. The cloth belly-band further has the disadvantage that even if the cloth belly-band has been applied around the belly with a suitable tightness, each time the wearer eats a meal, he must loosen or unwind the belly-band and after the meal, he must rewind the band around the belly with a suitable tightness. In addition, it is difficult to maintain the ends of the cloth belly-band in a stabilized state.
In order to eliminate the disadvantages inherent in the prior art belly-bands referred to above, an improved belly-band has been proposed and the improved belly-band comprised a relatively thin rubberized web main body, a similar configurated relatively thick rubberized main body and having piles on the other side or exposed side, said main body and textured member being sewed together all along their peripheral edges, and a plurality of synthetic resin hook pieces sewed to the other side of the main body and having bristles on the exposed side whereby when the belly-band is applied around the belly of a user, the bristles of the hook pieces interlock with the piles of the textured member. Although the last-mentioned belly-band has successfully eliminated the disadvantages inherent in the knitted woolen yarns, combination of woolen yarns and rubberized yarns, leather and cloth belly-bands, the last-mentioned belly-band which is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,623,488 is only effective in protecting the user's belly from being chilled or in protecting a motorcycle or horse rider against gastroptosis, but it is ineffective in treating any affected part of the body of a wearer.